The Intrusive Author in Alasdair Gray's Lanark and 1982, Janine

Rethinking author construction: the intrusive author in Alasdair Gray’s Lanark and 1982, Janine Claire Blomeley Australian Catholic University With the proclamation of 'The Death of the Author' in 1968 by Roland Barthes came the rise of the notion that the author, along with the text s/he creates, is a construction.1 Textual authority has shifted from authorial intention to the text, and with it the reader. This breakdown in authority has led to an anxiety of form in the author. In metafictional novels, novels that draw attention to their fictionality, this anxiety is made explicit through consistently highlighting the construction of the author. Alasdair Gray’s novels, whilst varying in content and form, all include metafictional devices that consider the construction of the author. Patricia Waugh in Metafiction argues that modern writers are aware of theoretical concerns regarding the constructed nature of fiction, and through this are able to manipulate and draw attention to the formation of a text2. Waugh also argues that metafictional writers 'all explore a theory of fiction through the practice of writing fiction.' 3With this in mind, I argue that Alasdair Gray’s novels are consistent with the idea raised in Lanark: 'I want Lanark to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another.' 4 Each of his novels can be read as independent texts, but can also be thought of as a body of work that, when read as such, influences the reading of the individual novel. Whilst this is true of all bodies of work, I argue that Gray explores the influences of creating various authorial positions on the construction of the author in both an individual text and in a collection of works. Metafiction holds that the author engages with theoretical questions regarding literature and therefore manipulates theoretical ideas in the texts to address these questions. To discuss authorship in Alasdair Gray’s novels I draw from two theories, Michel Foucault’s author-function and Wayne Booth’s implied author. In ‘What is an Author?’, Michel Foucault discusses the function of the author in the relationship between an author and a text. For Foucault, it is the name of the author that maintains its position of privilege over the text, and he introduces the term author- function to describe the ways in which the idea or category of author functions in discourse. Foucault’s author-function is comprised of four aspects. First, the author’s name binds them legally to the text they have produced. Second, author-function does not exist in all texts nor for all times. Third, the concept of the author allows the reader to construct consistencies across texts sharing an author’s name. These consistencies include values, style and theoretical ideals. The fourth and final aspect 1 R. Barthes, 'The Death of the Author', in Leitch, V. B. (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed., New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010, pp. 1322-26. 2 P. Waugh, Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction, London, New York, Routledge, 1990, pp. 2-5. 3 Waugh, p. 2. 4 A. Gray, Lanark, Edinburgh, Canongate, 2011, p. 483. Limina, Volume 21.2, 2016 Claire Blomeley is that in a text that possesses author-function the use of the first-person personal pronoun does not refer to the writer of the text. He distinguishes between the author and the real person, writing, 'these aspects of an individual, which we designate as an author (or which comprise an individual as an author) are projections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way of handling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extract as pertinent, the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we practice.'5 The author is not simply the writer, but is instead a figure constructed in discourse that is not limited to the individual writer. Foucault’s concept of author-function emerges from a broadly sociological approach, addressing the role of the author, or more specifically the position of the author and the part it plays in society. It is not a feature of writing, but is instead a social construct that creates a form of discourse around the author. I argue, however that in metafiction the writer has an awareness of this social function and is thereby able to manipulate it in order to address ideas of the construction of the author. Using this concept somewhat against the grain, I bring to the interpretation of the texts the term author-function to discuss the influence of the name and discursive positions of the author. It is not a direct, definitive or singular influence, but is one that is created by the interaction of the reader’s knowledge of the work and the author and particular discursive formations – beyond both reader and author - such as genre or field of content, or modes of distribution. The term 'implied author' has become a contentious one in the scholarly community with debates over meaning and relevance. The implied author is a concept introduced by Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. Most simply, the implied author is a ‘second self’ of the writer that exists only in the text. Booth writes of the construction of the author, 'The 'implied author' chooses, consciously or unconsciously, what we read; we infer him as an ideal, literary, created version of the real man; he is the sum of his own choices.'6This process is unavoidable, as Booth points out, 'However impersonal he may try to be his reader will inevitably construct a picture of the official scribe who writes in this manner.'7 The text offers the reader a set of linguistic conventions and norms that are consistent throughout a text and from which a vision of the author is created. The implied author informs the beliefs, values and purpose of a text. The term has been perceived as ambiguous, but in this there is a correlation to Gray’s work in the ambiguous and shifting authorial positions. The implied author is the product of the examination of the text that produces an image of the author, who in the same manner as characters in the text hold particular beliefs, attitudes and stances. The implied author however differs from characters as they are not explicitly present in the text but, as the name suggests, are implied through the text. The implied author is not just contained to a single text. Booth addresses the issue of how the implied author can address a body of work by the same writer: 5 M. Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’, in Vincent B. Leitch (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed., New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010, p. 1483. 6 W. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1983, p. 75. 7 Booth, p. 71. 2 © The Limina Editorial Collective http://www.limina.arts.uwa.edu.au Limina, Volume 21.2, 2016 Claire Blomeley Criticism has no name for these sustained characters who somehow are the sum of the invented creators implied by all of the writer’s particular works. For lack of a good name, I shall call such a sustained character (still different, of course, from the writer, with his quotidian concerns, his dandruff, his diverticulosis, her nightmares, her battles with the publisher) the career-author. The sustained creative centre implied by a sequence of implied authors.8 The career-author allows for a text to be placed in the context of the author’s other work. The career-author becomes a signifier for a set of consistent features. Unlike author function this knowledge, brought to the work by the reader, remains textual, containing no biographical knowledge, nor any of the other discursive preconceptions, such as the designation of the term 'novelist'. Significantly, this means that tropes and allegories can be seen to cross over in texts. In Alasdair Gray’s work, the reader having read 1982, Janine and having made a connection between sadomasochism and Scottish politics may then read Scottish politics into any of his further novels that contain sadomasochism. Without knowledge of the biographical Alasdair Gray the reader is able to construct an author of the works by Alasdair Gray who writes about the political state of Scotland. Through analysing metafictional traits in Alasdair Gray’s novels, the various authorial positions in the texts are exposed. The author is not a stable figure across a body of work, nor within a single text. Author-function and implied author both work to form the author. The implied author as the inventor of the text is able to manipulate the reader’s preconceived notions of the figure of Alasdair Gray, and in doing so adds to the author-function. In turn the reader will approach the next Gray novel they read with a stronger concept of the author-function and in turn read the implied author as one that shares political agendas. Through metafictional traits such as parody, metaphor and manipulation of literary form, Gray is able to make this relationship explicit in his novels. Texts presenting various authorial positions are not limited to modernist or postmodern writing. Both Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte break narration to discuss the nature of writing in Northanger Abbey and Jane Eyre, respectively. In these authorial positions we see the self of the author not only manifests as an extratextual figure but also can be seen throughout the text in the form of compartmentalised selves. Alasdair Gray’s novels present many authoritative voices that take on author- like roles. In doing so Gray is able to explore and make explicit the role and construction of the author in fiction.

Load more